<p>How big of a deal are Cs actually, when the students aren’t looking at elites and the overall stats/GPA are extremely competitive (shoe-in level except for the Cs) for particular colleges?</p>
<p>We know folks who have gotten into CC-brand name colleges (with merit $$) with the occasional semester grade of C on the transcript. These kids tend to attend very intense and challenging programs and the colleges know this.</p>
<p>Both my kids got a couple of Cs for quarter grades in HS (for one kid, it was missing work; the other, it was despite busting his %$#@). They pulled them up to Bs by the end of the semester.</p>
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<p>WHAT???!!! I’d definitely be on the phone to the principal. I don’t think I could muster the apathy to be so unconcerned about such a glaring error. Shame on that guidance counselor.</p>
<p>I don’t think a couple of Cs matter at all, particularly when you are talking about 3-3.3 averages. You know there have to be a significant number of Cs there.</p>
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In his case, he runs the semesters with Cs in math. A to A- in every other subject in all IB/AP or pre-IB classes. Poor kid is a math disaster, but very bright. He took Statistics at the CUNY and got a B+. Go figure. But a wonderful boy.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t think the types of students who are interested in a robotics tournament are a representative sample of all high school students. I think the first comment is still spot-on – most high school students anywhere in the country (not just the East Coast) are looking for sports, parties, and whether they can afford it.</p>
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<p>You can easily have a 3.0 to 3.3 average and not have any Cs. My son doesn’t.</p>
<p>Hmmm…You can easily have below a 3.0 without C’s…unfortunately…</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think what kinda irked me is the generalization that East Coast boys that are into sports when just about all of the boys that I know are NOT. In our very small HS we have just as many kids on the robotics team as on the baseball or basketball team and the band has more then both. I dislike our whole coast being lumped together.</p>
<p>I think GPA is overall more important then particular grades in subjects unless it pertains to your major. Someone that wants to be an Engineer and is applying to a college as such might have a problem explaining C’s in math. A Computer Science major probably should get A’s and B’s in the programming classes.</p>
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<p>How is that mathematically possible?</p>
<p>Queen’s Mom: 2 B’s, 3 B-'s>>>>approx. 2.8 GPA</p>
<p>or 1 B+, 1B, 3 B-'s…</p>
<p>or other combos,… all without C’s.</p>
<p>I see. In D’s school, they have A, B, C, D…no pluses or minuses. I guess it makes sense then. This all goes to show that GPA calculations are essentially worthless across different schools.</p>
<p>^^^ I wish…rough to have a “B” student without a 3.0…thank goodness she’s only a soph…</p>
<p>Kathiep, since you have misunderstood my post again, I will be clearer:</p>
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<li><p>I was not saying saying that all East Coast boys are interested in sports.</p></li>
<li><p>Your comparing the number of kids in band or robotics at your school to the basketball or baseball teams is meaningless. At the vast majority of schools, basketball and baseball team sizes are limited by school policy or league rules (for example, a 12 boy basketball team)–and are much smaller than football or track teams. And were you including the freshman and junior varsity teams most schools have? </p></li>
<li><p>In addition, since I wrote about sports as a whole, not a single sport such as basketball, the comparison should be the number who participate in ALL sports–in its most recent survey, The National Federation of High School Associations found that 55% of all high school students of both sexes played a sport–do you think that robotics and band draw more?</p></li>
<li><p>Finally, remember that I was referring to being INTERESTED in sports, not just PLAYING a sport. A great many band members are indeed avid sports fans, just as I was in high school when my only school team was debating. Indeed, aside from your school, you will find that many robotics fans are also sports fans: the college with the most varsity sports teams in America (until cutbacks this year) was MIT. Now it is Harvard.</p></li>
<li><p>As for being irked about “our whole coast being lumped together”, my post was in response to our whole coast being lumped together as obsessed with GPAs.</p></li>
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<p>I wish your son and his friends great success; I think robotics is a wonderful pursuit and that the exalted status of athletes at so many colleges is unfortunate.</p>
<p>We are in the middle of a college tour and what I thought would happen has… My DS with his 3.1 GPA loves the school that is going to be a reach. His test scores, EC’s etc. would fit but his GPA is way too low. The school is a perfect match and I could see him thriving there. He will apply and we’ll hope for the best.</p>
<p>Zoosermom, if it’s one subject that gives him consistent trouble and everything else is that great, I suspect colleges would “get” that more than an inconsistent pattern across many subjects. The B+ in Stat is great – I’m sure that was a big boost to his self-confidence.</p>
<p>I can hardly claim to be an expert on admissions since my only child to go through the process so far only applied to one school. But it seems to me that a kid who got a 610 on the Math portion of the SAT would not be considered a math disaster by most admissions offices! </p>
<p>Maybe there are extenuating circumstances (especially given the B+ in the college course) for his C’s? A friend whose son is also IB and an excellent student overall has struggled with his foreign language (B’s there, with A’s in all other classes) due to inadequate preparation at his prior school in the language. If you start out a step behind, you may never catch up to the excellent.</p>
<p>Online grades are a very mixed blessing. I think there is a big danger in the parents taking on too much of the child’s job of monitoring grades. Lots of parents are e-mailing or calling teachers, and complaining, cajoling, or being generally annoying. We try to make sure our kids do the follow-up with teachers if there is a problem, and I wonder if we’ve put them at a disadvantage by not being more pesky.</p>
<p>Personally, I would find it more helpful if all teachers (some do, some don’t) posted all assignments online so we could check to see what is coming rather than seeing the grades on what has already happened. But that is because our son’s issue was not completing assignments.</p>
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That’s exactly what his problem is, and to a lesser extent my daughter’s as well. They went to two different parochial schools that absolutely did not teach math to grade level. My daughter, fortunately, has an older sister to drag her along, but she is lopsided in math too. The young man is the oldest and his school was two entire years behind in math, so there is a certain character shown (to me anyway) that he can pass at all because he’s done it all himself with no foundation at all, and he had the same utterly awful teacher for four semesters in high school. My daughter was lucky and had the “other” teacher or she might be in the same boat. She is a B to B- student in math, which is about accurate. But the young man’s mother is frantic because she’s a single mom and they need some financial help.</p>
<p>Seems to me the “started out behind in math” could be explained in well-done counselor recommendation or student essay. A 610 on the Math SAT might not get him into MIT, but it is well above average in the real world. And the rest of his record is outstanding.</p>
<p>He might be a good candidate for an Honors program in a less competitive school (either private or public). I’d guess if he found the right school, it would be generous with money and the Honors program would give him a chance to be in a more demanding curriculum than would be typical for the school.</p>